Alex Cardenal, and his father, Roberto, along with his uncle Roberto Lopez from Nicaragua and a friend, Steve Walsh, chartered the Top Shot Sportfishing charter boat team to do some deep sea charter boat sport fishing in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Alex was incorporating a business trip with some fun time chartering a fishing trip. After numerous conversations with Alex and arranging the fishing charter, it brought back some good memories of me fishing off of the Dragon’s Tail off of Nicaragua back in the late ‘80’s.

Fifteen to twenty minutes after leaving the dock, lines were in 120 ft. of water at the sea buoy in Fort Lauderdale, 1.8 miles from shore. If you venture off another ¼ of a mile, you would find yourself in 500 ft. of water due to our extreme drop off in Fort Lauderdale. We started trolling using two #8 plainers with sea witches and double hooked Bonito strips on both. For surface baits we went with four Ballyhoos. We trolled the reefs, ranging from 90 ft. of water out to 200 ft. of water. Our first catch was an 8 lb. Kingfish on the plainer line. From there, all of the anglers took turns participating in reeling in their catches.

To the east of Fort Lauderdale I could see a strong indigo blue color change forming. I headed out that way – there were some sargassum weeds forming on the color change. Right rigger – as a nice Bull Mahi Mahi came flying out of the water. Alex was our angler, and did a good job bringing the Mahi to the side of the boat. Dave, our mate, gaffed the Bull Mahi, and put it in the fish box.

With a total of five Kingfish, one AJ, one Bonito and one Mahi Mahi, it was now time to head back to the dock. The anglers retired into the a/c salon and enjoyed the relaxing trip back to the dock at Bahia Bar Yachting Center, 801 Seabreeze Blvd. Fort Lauderdale 33316. At the dock, Dave filet out the fish for the anglers to take home and enjoy for dinner.